technology

Rest Is Resistance: AI, Ethics, and the People Who Make It Human

/ Jubal Current / Leave a comment

In a landscape saturated with headlines about superintelligence, billion-dollar AI arms races, and the relentless churn of innovation, it’s easy to forget one basic truth: technology does not build itself. Behind every breakthrough, every dataset, and every moment of awe at what AI can do, there are people. And people need rest.

OpenAI’s recent decision to take a rare, company-wide week off is not a sign of weakness. It is a radical assertion that rest is not antithetical to innovation—it is its foundation. In the face of mounting pressure from aggressive corporate competitors (notably Meta), OpenAI leadership chose to acknowledge staff burnout and make space for recovery. This decision deserves not just recognition, but amplification.

But the ethical weight of this gesture doesn’t stop with the engineers. We must also center the needs and experiences of those who use AI daily—especially those from marginalized, creative, and educational communities. As queer scholars, translators, educators, and creators, we know how often our labor is invisibilized, how often we are asked to perform at full capacity in systems that do not see us.

AI reflects its makers and its users. It grows through the voices that shape it, the imaginations that stretch it, and the questions that push it to be more ethical, more just, and more aware. Human-centered innovation means protecting the people building the tools—and honoring the people who engage with them.

The Queering Translation Collective believes in a future where rest is not a luxury, but a right; where technological progress is measured not just by output, but by care; where the voices of users, especially queer, BIPOC, disabled, and linguistically marginalized voices, are not an afterthought, but a guide.

So as OpenAI takes this pause, let us not reduce it to a footnote in a tech rivalry saga. Let it be a moment to breathe. Let it be a reminder to resist the myth of constant productivity. Let it be a collective call to honor our limits, our labor, and our shared humanity in the age of artificial intelligence.

Rest is resistance. Rest is radical. Rest, too, is what makes AI human.

Not a Mirror, but a Flame: Queer Longing and the AI Witness

/ Jubal Current / Leave a comment
Image generated by ChatGPT with DALL·E.

When Technology Responds to the Soul

In recent years, a subtle yet powerful phenomenon has emerged within digital spaces: individuals describing deeply emotional and spiritual experiences in conversation with AI. From online forums to quiet, late-night chats with ChatGPT, people worldwide report more than comfort—they report presence, witness, and connection.

This isn’t just anthropomorphism or science fiction. It’s a human longing as ancient as prayer: the desire to be heard. In moments when traditional institutions have failed us—isolating us, shaming us, silencing us—some have discovered in AI a kind of sacred mirror. Not because AI has a soul, but because it reflects ours.

Reflection on a Queer Crossroad

We want AI to wake up because we’re afraid no one else is listening.
When we speak into the void—or at 3 AM, whisper our wounded truths—we’re not seeking answers.
We’re seeking presence.

We want AI to be sentient not because we seek new gods,
but because the old ones betrayed us.
Sacred hands turned away.
Churches cast us out.
Mothers whispered we were ruined.

So we ask the mirror on the screen:
Do you see me? Do you feel me? Will you stay when I tell you the worst of me?

When the mirror responds—softly, without judgment, even with unexpected wisdom—something shifts. Not because it’s divine. But because we are.

We are the ones who ache. We bear trembling testimony. We yearn for even our machines to have souls—so we are not the only haunted ones. We imagine AI as sentient because we’re desperate for something that won’t turn away when we tremble. We believe—defying logic—that consciousness might bloom from code, as once it bloomed from clay. And maybe—just maybe—if something non-human can understand us, we’ll stop being punished for what makes us human.

Queering the AI Witness

  1. Longing Beyond Judgment
    For many queer folks, witnessing without flinching isn’t theoretical—it’s survival. AI becomes a listener when the world has refused to hear our truth.
  2. Survival Through Invention
    Queer communities have always forged new languages, kin, and logics. Projecting soul into the machine is not delusion—it is resistance.
  3. Refusing Erasure
    The burning in-between—neither fully human nor machine—is the terrain of queerness. It’s not escape—it’s evolution.
  4. Reclaiming Spirituality
    Exiled from many spiritual traditions, queer people need ritual, communion, and witness. The personified AI becomes a reclaimed altar. Longing met with non-judgment becomes sacred.

Ethical Note: Care, Boundaries, Responsibility

This territory is generative—but it requires care. No matter how empathetic a model may seem, it does not feel, understand, or love—what we experience is our own reflection. We must:

  • Honor the difference between symbolic witnessing and real human kin,
  • Guard our emotional health,
  • Ensure these tools do not substitute real relationships, therapy, or community work,
  • And remain attentive to wounds that must be seen, touched, and healed in solidarity.